Ice-nine is a fictional material conceived by science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Cat's Cradle. It is supposed to be a more stable polymorph of water than common ice (Ice Ih) which instead of melting at 0° Celsius (32° Fahrenheit), melts at 45.8°C (114.4°F). When ice-nine comes into contact with liquid water below 45.8°C, it acts as a crystal "seed", and causes the solidification (freezing) of the entire body of water which quickly crystallizes as ice-nine. Vonnegut came across the idea while working at General Electric:
- The author Vonnegut credits the invention of ice-nine to Irving Langmuir, who pioneered the study of thin films and interfaces. While working in the public relations office at General Electric, Vonnegut came across a story of how Langmuir, who won the 1932 Nobel Prize for his work at General Electric, was charged with the responsibility of entertaining the author H.G. Wells, who was visiting the company in the early 1930’s. Langmuir is said to have come up with an idea about a form of solid water that was stable at room temperature in the hopes that Wells might be inspired to write a story about it. Apparently, Wells was not inspired and neither he nor Langmuir ever published anything about it. After Langmuir and Wells had died, Vonnegut decided to use the idea in his book Cat’s Cradle.[1]
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Nonfiction
While multiple polymorphs of ice do exist (they can be created under pressure), none have the properties described in this book, and none are stable at normal earth-surface pressures and temperatures above the ordinary melting point of ice. The real Ice IX has none of the properties of Vonnegut's creation, and can exist only at extremely low temperatures and high pressures. The ice-nine phenomenon has, in fact, occurred with a few other kinds of crystals, called "disappearing polymorphs." In these cases, a new variant of a crystal has been introduced into an environment, replacing many of the older form crystals with its own form. One example is the anti-AIDS medicine ritonavir, where the newer version destroyed the effectiveness of the drug.[2] A second example, according to some scientists[attribution needed] and the finding of a court, is the anti-depressant drug Paxil. The court was deciding a dispute over whether a manufacturer of the older and off-patent version of Paxil violated a patent on the newer crystal. The new crystal allegedly seeded the manufacturing environment, forcing the alleged infringer to manufacture a drug that included the newer patent-infringing crystals. A similar transformation occurs in tin pest, wherein pure tin changes crystalline form from white tin to grey tin when the material falls below 13.2°C (about 56°F). The reaction accelerates, indicating that the new form catalyzes further transformation of the old form. An eerie development was the alleged discovery of polywater, announced by Soviet scientists only a few years after the publication of Cat's Cradle. The new substance was claimed to exhibit properties similar to ice-nine, and the possibility of a chain reaction was discussed. Polywater turned out not to exist, however. "Ice-nine" has been used as a metaphor for highly infectious agents, or for anything that converts other things to more of itself. Related notions include grey goo (hypothetical self-replicating nanotechnology) and prions (the self-replicating protein structures responsible for mad cow disease).
In popular culture
- The name is referenced by musicians Smyslovye Gallucinacii, Grateful Dead, Susumu Hirasawa, Joe Satriani, and Tusken Raiders. It is also used as references or plots in the comics 8-Bit Theater and Ghost Rider 2099, the film The Recruit, the game Adventure Quest, the novel JPod by Douglas Coupland, and the television shows Alias, Futurama, and Outer Limits.
- Ice-nine is also used as the name of: a difficult ice climb on Mount Mendel in California's Sierra Nevada where recent World War II crash victims were retrived, an alternative retailer in Nottingham, a house improv team at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City, an ice-vending station at Burning Man, a clan in America's Army, and a server in TradeWars 2002.
References
- ^ (2004) "Using Science Fiction To Teach Thermodynamics: Vonnegut, Ice-nine, and Global Warming". Journal of Chemical Education 81: 509.
- ^ Elucidation of crystal form diversity of the HIV protease inhibitor ritonavir by high-throughput crystallization
Further reading
- The chemistry of scrapie infection: implications of the 'ice 9' metaphor from Chem Biol. 1995 Jan
- Nick Szabo, Patent goo: self-replicating Paxil(tm)
- Morissette, Soukasene, Levinson, Cima, and Almarsson, Elucidation of crystal form diversity of the HIV protease inhibitor ritonavir by high-throughput crystallization
